


For in the Wilderness Shall Waters Break Forth

by raspberryhunter



Category: Moses und Aron - Schoenberg, Tanakh
Genre: Community - Freeform, Female Friendship, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, and if there were a third way?, neither the idea without the image nor the image without the idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-19 21:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/pseuds/raspberryhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some of the folk Zipporah saw had danced before the golden calf. Many had renounced it from the beginning. Most tried to follow God in the way they best understood. And they were all Israel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unscored (libretto only; some musical sketches)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seekingferret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/gifts).



> Many and profuse thanks to my beta team, elementals, kass, mithrigil, and especially sprocket, who went above and beyond in talking me through multiple drafts, and in the process went from not knowing anything about either canon to pointing out holes in my references to both canons.
> 
> This is readable if you don't know the opera, although note that Moses' and Aaron's characters are different than in the Biblical version (in particular with more extreme philosophical views, especially Moses), and other events have been changed to reflect this. Also, the opera seems to put the Golden Calf incident and Meribah rather closer together than in the original story.

**I. The idea**

_Miriam, where were you while Aaron was creating the golden calf, the vanished image?_

Ah, my brother, I can hear the anger in your voice, though you think yourself above it. As it happens, I was helping Shua, daughter of Heber, in her birth. Babies wait for neither words of stone nor images of gold, and she had a long labor; but now Shua and her new daughter are well.

Moses, when will you lay aside your anger at your brother? Did the voice of God not say, 'From him shall your voice speak, as from you, mine'?" Will you limit God's understanding by your own?

Should you continue to alienate yourself from the people, from Israel, then neither word nor image will satisfy you. My brother, I know you love the idea, that you reject the image. Will you also love your people? Will you see them as they are, both the commonplace and the extraordinary?

See Aaron; see that he is your brother, now and forever. See how profoundly he loves, though he does not always understand. See Zipporah your wife, fierce, brilliant: the mother of your children. See how she has accepted the children of Israel as her own family, the deep friendships she has forged with them, how she would be your true partner in leading this people if only you would open to her. See your children, how Gershom and Eliezer argue and brawl but are always united in the end against all others, how they desire neither the unknowable mount nor the gleaming of gold so much as a tender word or glance from you for their own children.

And see Shua. See Elisheva and me delivering her daughter. Zipporah bringing her water and manna the day after the child's birth. Shua smiling at us. Only see us, Moses. We are people. We are not thought alone. We are less, and more. How can you unite us with God if you will not even see who we are?

My brother, I do not pretend to understand the incomprehensible. But I know it is not possible to separate the known from the unknowable, the reality from the concept, the idea from the image. Water may be an image, but it is also its own substance, and necessary for life. 

O Moses my brother, will you yet strive against our brother? Two brothers at odds may be simply two brothers, but is itself an image: one of the oldest.

Now remember:

_But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart._

**II. The image**

_The golden calf, the shining of the gold, Aaron's face distorted, reflecting back at him: the lost idea._

Aaron my brother, brother of Moses -- what I have of you, of our brother, is indeed in images:

_Aaron will always and forever be the brother, the small boy, who ran to her as she knelt and held out her hands to him._

_The bulrushes, the sound of the water, the light on the water. Moses will never not be the baby she watched the river carry._

Hold the idea in the image, my brother. Hold it for your brother, who cannot always understand why the image is needed. But keep the infinite along with the finite. For what is the image without the idea? the deed without the thought? what is the heart without the mind, the mind without the heart?

I have loved you both: the brother whose mother and father I shared, the brother with whom I shared neither; the brothers I watched grow. And you love this people, I know. Yet they are all more than the image, have substance of which the image is merely the surface. Who are they? Will you understand that they are more than you see; will your love accept all that lies between them?

_Caleb and Joshua looked up at the night sky, brilliant with stars, as they argued loudly with each other, trying to understand what was or was not conceivable. Bezalel handed an engraved stone to his partner Oholiav, who carefully fit the stone into a metal setting, his tongue between his teeth in concentration. Zipporah and Elisheva bent their heads together, Zipporah motioning energetically; Elisheva placed a gentle hand on her arm, stilling her, and Zipporah laughed in response._

And do not forget, do not: more than milk and honey, more than rapture, more than marvels, is what we are promised. Not just what one is now, but what we can become. Not just what you now feel but what we will understand, though yet we comprehend it only in images --

_Aaron's son Eleazar ran after him on his deceptively-fast small legs, crying for the mattock his father used to cut straw for Pharaoh's bricks. Aaron turned; as he started to understand what Eleazer wanted, his indulgent look drained away. Eleazer continued to wail as Aaron deliberated. Finally he scooped up some clay from the riverbank, quickly made a small toy model of the tool, placing it in his son's hands; the boy tilted his head in a considering glance. Elisheva glanced up from the meal she was preparing, watching the interplay between her husband and son. Her lips twitched as she rose and came to Aaron's side. Gently she took the mattock from his hands, curled Eleazer's fingers around the handle; she showed their son how it cut, showed him how to be careful of the edge, as Eleazer's quick smile flashed in delight._

Here is one more thing:

_Aaron holds out his hands and a young prince of Asher runs to them, laughing. (The girl Miriam holds out her hands and the small boy Aaron runs to them. (The river carries Moses away from where Aaron waits with Jochebed. The river carries Moses to where Miriam runs and hides, watching him, watching the princess of Egypt hold out her hands to the water.))_

Do you see, my brother? Do you see how this is larger than any of us alone?

Will you listen?

_Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one._


	2. Soprano, two speaking roles, and full orchestra

**III. Miriam's song**

_You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed;_   
_you have guided them in your strength to your holy habitation._   
_You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain,_   
_the place, O LORD, which you have made for your abode._

The sun was now low enough in the sky that it no longer blasted with heat, and the shadows from the rocks and the stubbly bushes were beginning to lengthen. Zipporah slowed her steps so that Elisheva could keep up; although her sister-in-law was much more used to the wilderness after their years there, she still occasionally lagged behind Zipporah, desert-born and desert-bred. "Whom have you asked to teach the children while Miriam is gone?" Zipporah asked.

"Achsah is teaching the girls."

"Maacah's daugher?" Zipporah raised her eyebrows. "Is she not young for that?" Zipporah remembered when Achsah had been born; it seemed as if it had scarcely been yesterday. She remembered holding the infant Achsah as she slept, her wrinkled face set in a frown; her arms remembered the dense warm weight of her.

Elisheva grinned. "Ah, Zipporah, these days the whole world is young, is it not? Yes, she is scarcely more than a girl, but she is wonderful with the children, you should watch her. She has a gift. Miriam may want to keep her on as an additional teacher when she returns." She frowned. "And Bezalel has been teaching the boys."

"Miriam's grandson. Yes, I hear he spends his days making toys for the little ones." Zipporah's lips thinned. "He is wasted doing that." She was surprised at the vehemence in her voice, an anger she had thought was behind her. But Bezalel was her favorite great-nephew, and she could not help but think of the boy's quick nervous hands, the way he could not stop himself from creating designs or patterns or figures from anything that was available. Once he had even crafted a small perfect frog from bits of manna, which one of his cousins had promptly eaten. Zipporah went on recklessly, "Aaron would have had him and Oholiav designing and building the most marvelous tabernacle, the most wondrous--"

"Peace, my sister," Elisheva said gently. "I can see why Moses forbade it, after the golden calf." Zipporah tried not to wince at the mention of her husband and all the things that lay between them. Elisheva watched her closely, and added, "How is Shua doing with the midwifery?"

As if Elisheva wouldn't know better than she would; but Zipporah accepted the diversion and the gentle implied rebuke. "Very well, in fact. She delivered Abihail's first baby alone and with no problems. Abihail told me that she couldn't imagine a better midwife than Shua."

The two women shared a pleased smile. Elisheva said, "Miriam's always said she simply needed more confidence. I'm glad to know that overseeing a birth without having the choice to defer to either Miriam or me was just what she needed." Her smile turned to a frown. "There was something else we needed to discuss. I'm forgetting something."

"Mahlah and her sisters," Zipporah reminded her. "Her parents are -- well, Zelophehad is very ill now, and Matred is busy with him, so Mahlah is trying to take care of all the girls. Poor thing -- she is being very brave, very helpful, but it is hard for her."

"Yes." Elisheva's brows drew together in a look of concern. "I would normally ask Achsah to help with her, but I suppose she is is too busy teaching right now. Hm." She tilted her head in thought. "Matred was kind to Shelomith when her son died, and I think she came to know Matred's daughters well, particularly Mahlah. Perhaps Shelomith can help. I will ask her."

"Yes. I would not have thought of it, but I think you are right to ask her. It will be good for Shelomith as well." Unspoken between them was what both had seen: that when her half-Egyptian son had died, leaving her without husband or child, Shelomith had retreated from her previous talkative self to become reserved and silent, and both women were concerned for her.

The two of them had come to a rocky outcropping, and without having to speak they found a large flat rock and sat down together. From here, Zipporah knew, they could see both the camp and the place where Miriam was sequestered outside the camp until she was well again. She glanced down. Miriam was looking steadily at the pillar of cloud visible over the camp.

Elisheva sighed, following her gaze. "I shall be glad when Miriam is back." She smiled ruefully at Zipporah. "Or -- you would be better at this, I know, if you were --" Elisheva cut herself off. It was the closest she had come in a while to speaking aloud what they never talked about: that without Moses' explicit support, Zipporah could not claim her rightful place at the head of the people. 

Zipporah knew Elisheva had always felt guilty about this, that the women looked to her and not Zipporah when Miriam was gone. She wished she could wholly convince her sister-in-law that she had made her peace with it, that her partnership with Elisheva was one of the deep joys of her life. She laid a hand on the other woman's arm. "You are doing marvelously well."

Elisheva gave Zipporah a wry, affectionate look. "Only because you have such a good memory. I cannot hold all the people and their needs in my head the way Miriam does." She passed a hand over her forehead. "Oh, and as we were speaking of Mahlah: I have been trying not to borrow trouble, but if Zelophehad dies, there is the matter of Mahlah and her sisters' inheritance. Moses will not understand how important it is to them, and though I love Aaron, you and I both know quite well my husband will be swayed by the first man who desires the inheritance. I need Miriam to talk to them. I cannot reach them the way she can."

"She said seven days outside the camp, and she would be able to come back. When have you known her to be wrong?" 

Elisheva laughed. "Ah, Zipporah, do you forget Miriam and I have known each other since infancy? I've known her to be wrong many times." She sobered. "But she is right more often than not."

There was a silence. And into the silence, Miriam started to sing. _I will sing to the Lord; the Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him._ Even attenuated by distance and by the sickness that took her out of the camp, Miriam's pure voice cut through the still air. The song shifted to a slower, more meditative pace: _The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord be gracious to you and give you peace._

Out of the corner of her eye, Zipporah noticed a slight movement on the rocks on the other side of the ridge they were on. She surveyed the area warily. And then she saw: Moses and Aaron were standing on the other side of the ridge, in a shadow of the rock that had hidden them from view until now. They were looking away from both Miriam and the camp, into the vastness of the desert, but there was something about the tilt of their heads that suggested they could hear Miriam's singing. They stood a little apart from each other, a constraint between them clear to see even at a distance, but even so Zipporah thought she could see a similarity in the way they stood, the way they listened. As she looked at him, all the old anguished love she bore him came rushing up at her: Moses, her husband, the father of her children, the man who had chosen to keep his thought and heart from her; whose God she served, but knew in a way that was not his.

She nudged Elisheva, who startled briefly; her eyes widened as she saw the men. The two women watched them for a while without speaking. Finally Elisheva said quietly, "I think Miriam has averted some great evil between our husbands that might otherwise have separated them. When Moses came down from Sinai, when Aaron made the golden calf -- I was afraid. But Miriam has taken it on herself."

Miriam's song had changed again, this time to something wordless and high, the notes precise, repeating and inverting, but without a definite melody as Zipporah understood it. She thought for a second of flames flickering in a bush, of water flowing in the desert, and then even those images fled. "Music is neither an idea nor an image," she murmured, watching the intent look on Miriam's face. 

"It can be both," Elisheva said, equally softly.

Zipporah drew in a sudden breath as an idea came to her. Elisheva gave her a questioning look. "Bezalel and Oholiav, Elisheva. They cannot make the tabernacle they desired, that Aaron dreamed of -- but they have a need to design, to build things of beauty. Let them make instruments of music for the people of Israel. Trumpets, of gold or silver. Tambourines."

Elisheva's eyes widened. "Lyres. Instruments we have no name for yet, but that they could design, that they could create. Complex, beautiful instruments, that neither Moses nor Aaron could object to. Yes."

Zipporah's lips turned up slightly. "Miriam can solve problems even away from the camp." She looked at the woman below, the woman who had always been so full of life from the day Zipporah had met her, and was surprised to find how frail she looked. It was just, she told herself, the height they were at, and that all of them were getting older. And yet, the thought she had hesitated to articulate even to herself, the thought that perhaps the sickness that took her out of the camp now, the sickness that had returned after a time away, was the beginning of the end: "If anything were to happen to her -- What will happen to Moses? To Aaron? To all of us?"

Elisheva put a hand on Zipporah's shoulder, gently turned her to face the camp. She saw Achsah, bending to examine something Mahlah was showing her. Maacah was holding Abihail's baby, while Abihail talked earnestly to her. Tirzah, Mahlah's sister, ran crying to Shelomith, who knelt and held out her hands to the girl. A bit further away, Bezalel and Oholiav were having some argument, arms flailing wildly, that as she watched resolved into agreement. 

Some of the folk she saw had danced before the golden calf. Many had renounced it from the beginning. Most tried to follow God in the way they best understood. Some followed Moses closely, some Aaron more than Moses; and some neither. And they were all Israel.

Zipporah was not a seer, nor was Elisheva a prophetess. But with the warm strength of Elisheva's hand on her shoulder, the clear lines of Miriam's song threading through the hush of the desert, she thought of everything binding their people together. In her mind and heart she saw all the acts of Israel in serving each other, like an offering, a manifestation of faith and love; an idea and an image and more than both. Achsah, Abihail, Shelomith, Shua, Bezalel, Ohliav, Elisheva, Zipporah, Miriam, Moses, Aaron, and so many more, all of them connected to each other and to God: together they made a pattern whose true nature and immensity she could only begin to understand, strong enough to make a bridge between the knowable and the unknowable.

And when Zipporah turned her head a little, she could still see Moses and Aaron, in the shadow of the rock, still listening to Miriam sing. And if Miriam died --

"We will endure," Elisheva said, and in her voice was regret, and the echo of some future grief, but also some of the same joy that was in Miriam's song. "Israel endures."

 _For in the wilderness shall waters break forth,_  
 _and streams in the desert;_   
_and the ransomed of the LORD shall return,_  
 _and come with singing to Zion._

**Kol Yisrael arevim zeh lazeh.**

_(All Israel is responsible for one another.  
All Israel is responsible to one another.)_

**Author's Note:**

> I have been somewhat flexible in my use of translations. _Moses und Aron_ quotations may be the Allen Forte translation, the Straub/Huillet (subtitles) translation, and/or my trying valiantly, if unskillfully, to do a more exact translation of the original German. Biblical quotations may come from the KJV, the ESV, or a combination of both.


End file.
